Omar ZahZah

The September Editor's Pick Poet is

Omar ZahZah

Please feel free to email Omar at: omarzahzah@gmail.com

THE DEVIL

The Baby looked like a devil.
He came out with horns and a tail.
The Doctor said Um.
The Doctor said This is unusual.
The Mother said Nothing.
The Father said Nothing.
The Doctor said Nothing.
They looked at the Baby.

The Baby looked like a devil.
He had horns and a tail.
He had a little mane of silver hair down his back.
The Father said I’m going for coffee
The Father said I’ll be right back.
He did not come back.

The Doctor closed the door.
The Doctor said Listen.
The Doctor said You don’t have to keep him.
The Mother said No.
She did not know why.
She took the Baby home.
The Baby became a good boy, then a good man.
But all his life, he looked like the devil.

BONES

She put them in the ground.
She said, Now I am rid of you.
At night she heard some whispers.
At night the windows shook.
At dawn there was a hole in the ground.
She saw someone she’d known before; he would not look back.

SKIN

He had too much on; he took some off.
There was still a lot,
he pulled some more.
Soon his fingers were red,
Soon people walked by.
What are you doing, they said.
What is the matter?
He said only too much,
He pulled some more.
Soon all around was red.
Soon there were knots of muscle,
Little nests of bone.
What happened, someone said.
He walked up closer.
Too much, another said.
Too much.

PAIN

She didn’t know where she got it.
The cut was smaller than any one of the hairs around her knuckles.
Still it screamed louder than anything she’d ever felt before.

“Is that all?” her friends said when they saw it.
She gripped her fingertip tightly.
“Is that all?” her boss said when he saw it.
In her room, she leaned back against the wall and eyed it closely.

“Is that all?”
She saw her world wrapping around her Sun.
The orbits, ordinarily invisible, outlined by red, pulsing veins.
She reached for the scissors…

“Is that all?”
There was nothing else.
Everything so vital, so fragile.
And only one snip to set it swirling, so deeply, irreparably, screaming apart.

Omar ZahZah’s work has appeared in such publications as Vulcan: a literary dis-allusion, Poetic Diversity, The Chiron Review, RipRap, and Schlock!.

“Death Went into the Place,” the first installment of Death, (a webcomic on which he is collaborating with fine artist and graphic novelist Eliza Frye that can be viewed at www.deathcomic.com) appeared in Narrative.

Several of his poems were featured in the anthology Beside The City of Angels: An Anthology of Long Beach Poetry, and his short story, “The Morning After,” was featured in the horror anthology Suffer Eternal: Tales of the Undead.